Stano Asks For A Stay -- Ruling Delayed

A federal judge in Orlando late Monday recessed an execution stay hearing for convicted serial killer Gerald Stano until today after nine hours of argument and witness examination by Stano's defense attorney.

U.S. District Judge Patricia Fawsett began hearing testimony early Monday afternoon on motions filed over the weekend by Stano attorney Mark Ollive, who contends Stano had inadequate legal representation at trial. She recessed the hearing shortly after 10 p.m.

Stano, 35, is scheduled to die in the electric chair at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday for the murder 13 years ago of Cathy Lee Scharf of Port Orange, whose body was found in Brevard County.

Stano, who confessed to the killing, also faces the death penalty in the deaths of two other Volusia County women. He has been convicted of killing seven other Florida women.

While Stano sat calmly through the hearing, Ollive contended his client did not receive an adequate defense from his trial attorneys, Seminole-Brevard Public Defender J.R. Russo and former assistant public defender Kenneth Friedland.

In nearly seven hours of cross-examining Friedland, Ollive repeatedly asked Fawsett to stay the execution for a hearing to present full evidence to show that the defense attorneys failed to properly suppress Stano's confession of killing Scharf.

Several times, Ollive said he needed to present as many as 150 witnesses and as few as five waiting outside the courtoom. He often pleaded exhaustion as grounds for halting the hearing.

Fawsett, however, refused to delay the proceedings until Ollive could show how Stano's defense attorneys had failed to represent him properly.

Ollive argued that Friedland had little experience in defending capital murder cases and that he failed to gather the necessary evidence to show that past confessions were questionable and therefore should not have been considered in the Scharf case.

Ollive also argued that records of Daytona Beach police interrogations showed Stano was duped into thinking he would not get the electric chair if he confessed to numerous killings and that he had been hypnotized by police before making the confession, which could have caused a false confession.

Friedland, who often said that he could not remember details of the Stano trial held four years ago, testified he was unaware of many of the records Ollive said the defense attorneys should have found.

One such record quoted a Daytona Beach police detective as telling Stano that there was not enough evidence to keep him out of the electric chair. ''They said they needed more confessions to keep him out of the chair.'' Ollive asked Friendland if he thought that would have been important evidence. Friedland said it would have been because it raised the question of whether Stano confessed voluntarily and whether the interrogators were truthful. But he stopped short of saying that and other evidence would have been enough to overturn Stano's confession, thereby setting aside the death penalty.